50:1, In Other Words, a Slam Dunk

One of the greatest weaknesses of the climate campaign from the very beginning is that, even if the extreme warming forecast is correct, the long time horizon and the standard economic calculation of applying real world discount rates to future costs all pointed to the conclusion that it made much more sense to . . . do nothing right now. This is just one more reason why environmentalists are so hostile to economics; David Brower famously said that “economics is a form of brain damage.” (So just who’s “anti-science” now?)

There’s a terrific new website, the 50-to-1-video-project, that walks through the problem with the IPCC’s own economic analysis, and here’s one of the terrific videos on the site (about 9 minutes long). The point is: carbon suppression is the least effective policy option for dealing with climate change. But of course, killing hydrocarbon energy is the real point of the exercise, not solving climate change, just as higher income taxes are not about helping the poor, but exacting liberal revenge on the prosperous.